Lately, I've been feeling a strange disconnect between what I do and think and what the reality is. Every time I've felt the urge to blog about something, I start thinking about all the other things I haven't and/or should write about. Not that there's any real rules to blogging. I spend a lot of time on my computer and then forcing myself to avoid it as long as possible, which is not very long usually since almost everything in my life is to some extent online now: friends, Colin, school, entertainment, boring things like paying bills. It's kind of scary, actually. Oh, and yes - I have finally given in and joined Twitter, as part of this crazy idea I got last week to start using Remember the Milk. You can find me as "deafelephant" although (at least for now) you'll have to subscribe to me (or whatever the action's called) to see my tweets because I'm keeping things private.
-- A couple technological "side" notes --
1) Remember the Milk is actually kind of hard to describe; calling it an online to do list doesn't do it justice. You can have it send you reminders daily and/or at "deadlines" via SMS, email, or IM what you should be doing (I have it set to send a reminder 15 mins before anything with a deadline so I know when a show will be on TV). You can send items too - I find this very useful. You make multiples lists, such as by project or place to do them. And these are just the basics. Other than keeping track of school projects, books and movies to read and see, creative ideas, and everything else I can think of that I have to do or keep track of, my Big Idea is to set up an efficient food system, including what I have, links to recipes, and what I need to buy. Since I intend to avoid real meal planning and still have the flexibility to decide what I really feel like eating, this is going to be even more challenging. However, I think this will actually pay off in the end; I hate being hungry and wracking my brain trying to think what food I have all the way down in the kitchen. Go ahead and call me a cataloguing geek. Overall, I've decided to use RTM because I don't want to always carry my notebook (especially into a store), I need a place to also store links with notes I make, this will be incentive to carry my phone and keep it charged, and like I said, everything I do is pretty much online that paper to-do lists and schedules don't make much sense, no matter how much they've saved me in the past.
2) I've also moved a bit more into cloud computing, even as the general tech world is increasingly ignoring it. This is not because I have a netbook or that I use linux (although the characteristics of someone with these might carry over). I just need an easier way to backup stuff and to get at it, especially since I've found myself both copying a document to my thumbdrive *and* emailing it to myself so I can print it off at school. One acronym librarians like is LOCKSS (lots of copies keeps stuff safe). Thus, I've started using pote.com as an insanely simple online word processor (two drawbacks: no footnotes and no straightforward downloading and saving as word). I've got about a gazillion documents in Google Docs, but have been moving away from it more and more because I don't like the interface. Heck, I hate using most word processors, online or offline, especially the Windows Vista MS Word. My problem is probably that I'm just too picky.
2b) I have an external hard drive (quite old in hard drive time) but I rarely use it for backups. I make a valiant effort to backup periodically which usually is every 3 to 6 months but this is not enough for safe keeping. I'm always nervous about losing the stuff I'm currently working on. After countless Blue Screens of Death and complete failure then total wipe or even complete physical replacement of the hard drive in my ThinkPad, I can't think why I despise Windows and am paranoid of having only one copy of something accessible. In any case, I've tried online storage options, never liked any of them, and since I'm trying to keep from giving *everything* to Google, I've kept looking. Solution: dropbox.com - I love it so far. There is no need to manually check to make sure that the most current versions of files are there or insert new ones; it automatically syncs when you connect to the internet. You can also access and edit things from any computer with internet access. It Just Works.
-- end side notes --
I also feel like not much actually happens in my day-to-day life but when I look back over recent weeks I realize it'd take hours just to tell you what's happened. And I don't mean "well, this day I took a shower and didn't used conditioner and this day I did use conditioner" but the more (hopefully) interesting tidbits, like how my car broke down on my way back to B-town the Monday night before last and the future of my car is looking quite bleak. I made it back safely, even if it was after midnight and my housemate came and picked me up in Martinsville, with only 25 miles further to go. This weekend Colin was a big help when we towed my car back to the house. If you ever need to do non-local car-towing, definitely check out U-Haul. From extensive online research, I knew it was going to be just over 100 dollars for self-towing as opposed to easily 250 to 300 with a towing company.
Since then, I've been more housebound than ever, unable to hop in my car and drive to the coffee shop or the grocery store. I had been making a point to try to get out every day, which doesn't always happen but it was a good thing for me to do. I'm trying to limit how much I depend on my housemates for rides and fortunately I only have the two class periods per week, although I did need to get prescriptions filled last Wednesday.
As for groceries, I've been doing perfectly fine without having to go to the store, apart from picking up milk when getting prescriptions and when Colin and I went shopping for the hors d'ouevres smorgasbord impromptu party. I tend to get more than I immediately need of any food I buy, usually sticking to a rule of "need one, get two." I'm really quite bad at making decisions sometimes; I'm the girl you see standing forever in front of a section because she can't figure out if she should get the cheapest, the bulk, or the quality (bulk isn't always the cheapest in pennies per ounce and sometimes I only want a little so it would actually be overall price that I'm looking at). So if I'm getting one of something, I save myself from twice the grief by getting two. Anyway, I've got quite a strange stockpile and although I've run out of eggs (some things I don't buy two of: eggs and milk), I'm using this as a good kick in the pants to finally use some of this stuff up, especially things I remember migrating from my apartment in May.
Currently, it's sunny and gorgeous out but I've got this sniffly sickness being nursed by a pot of cooling tea and a box of kleenex. It's one of those times when I feel driven to be uber-productive while I'm sick and I'm trying to rein it in so I don't keep wearing myself out. I might have to take a short slow walk outside just for sanity's sake though. But as for the dishwasher, maybe someone else will unload it after I started it and did the overflow of dishes by hand last night but I'm not overly optimistic nor does it bother me too much. Not even finding really old leftovers in tupperware with thriving colonies in the fridge bothers me much. Now, someone stealing and drinking my big bottle of pepsi for what is very clearly my part of the pantry, that annoys me, but I keep in mind it had been open for a couple days before it went missing so they got flat warm pepsi.
Okay, that's enough talking for now. Guess I'll have to actually get to what I was going to say in another post.
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